Treading Darkness — Lyle Nicholson

One day everything changed for Corporal Bernadette Callahan of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police force.

A routine chase of a stolen car in a small western Canadian town leads her into a dilemma. The suspect escapes into an abandoned mine. She hates the dark. Her overriding duty to catch the suspect and keep safe him from possible danger pushes her forward.

What happens next will push her to the edge. What she'll find is as surprising to her as it is the reader.

This short story is taken from one day in the life of Corporal Callahan. Before she became a Detective in the Serious Crime Division of the RCMP she was struggling with a sexist commanding officer and a career that looked like it was going nowhere.

The author said he was compelled to write this story after reading about the class action lawsuit the female members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had brought against the force for the years of sexual harassment they claimed they were subjected to.

In 2016, a 100 million dollar settlement was reached for two lawsuits brought by over 1,000 female officers. The commanding officer of the RCMP apologized to all the women who'd joined the force since 1974, who had wanted to bring something of value to this historic force and were harassed instead.

The fictional Bernadette would deal with the harassment in her own way.